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AMD has filed (and been granted) a request for immediate injunctive relief against multiple former employees that it alleges stole thousands of confidential documents. Named in the complaint are Robert Feldstein, Manoo Desai, Nicholas Kociuk, and Richard Hagen. All four left AMD to work at Nvidia in the past year. The loss of Feldstein was particularly noteworthy, as he’d been the head of AMD’s console initiatives for years. Feldstein was behind the work that landed AMD the Wii U, PS4, and Xbox Durango. He also worked closely with Microsoft during the Xbox 360’s development cycle and brought that contract to ATI prior to AMD’s acquisition.

The AMD complaint states that “He [Feldstein] transferred sensitive AMD documents, and in the next six months, the three defendants either did the same thing, violated ‘no-solicitation of employees’ promises, or both — all obvious violations of common law, statute, and/or contracts with AMD.” AMD claims to have forensic evidence that three of the four defendants transferred more than 10,000 confidential files in total, with the names of the files in question matching “either identically or very closely to the names of files on their AMD systems that include obviously confidential, proprietary, and/or trade secret materials related to developing technology.”

Furthermore, the company states that it has evidence that Hagen and Feldstein directly recruited Desai and Kociuk as well as attempted to solicit other employees from AMD. It then details the contents of specific folders and emails that were apparently transferred to external storage, and the list is pretty damning. Desai and Kociuk discussed how to eliminate evidence of transfer from their AMD systems. The named defendants ran Google searches for how to copy and delete large numbers of documents. Over 150,000 documents related to AMD desktop and laptop design were transferred before Kociuk turned in his resignation to AMD.

The court has ordered that the named defendants retain all pertinent documents, prepare their computers and storage devices for forensic evaluation, and refrain from taking any action that would obfuscate the location of said devices or the data contained therein.

Nvidia hasn’t been named or sued directly, so it’s not clear if the company officially asked AMD’s employees to steal data or if they did so of their own volition. While trade secret theft can (and does) occur, the fact is, semiconductor design is a fairly small business. The engineers who work in the field have often worked for multiple companies and it’s not unusual for seasoned employees to have prominent roles with multiple firms. In 2008, an engineer named Biswamohan Pani took a job with AMD while working for Intel — and began stealing documents from Santa Clara with the intent of leaking them to AMD. In that case, AMD claimed to have no knowledge of the theft, cooperated fully with the ensuing investigation, and was never named as party or beneficiary of the rogue engineer’s actions.

How Nvidia responds to these allegations will shape what happens next and what actions AMD wants to take. If the documents were turned over to Team Green, or if it recruited employees to steal them, this could explode into a mass of litigation. At this point, however, that seems unlikely. AMD’s allegations are specific enough that the company would likely know already if NV had directly been behind the espionage attempt.

Tagged In

Sounds like some serious payments were made by certain other companies.

Ouch

Poor AMD they just can’t catch a break. Just when they start making some killer GPUs now NVIDIA has their secret for success. This is not good at all for AMD. An example of how serious this is would be like if somehow AMD were able to get these type of files about Haswell. AMD could then potentially start producing chips that would equal or even best Haswell. Just saying that’s a huge blow to AMD especially if NVIDIA uses that stolen knowledge to their future advancements.

I feel really bad for AMD. I hope they can make a comeback with GCN and Piledriver. I talked to the wife of an employee at Nvidia and apparently it is hectic in there, but the products end up good and shiny.

GatzLoc

Now we know how NVIDIA survived after Fermi. :P

Joel Hruska

I’m leaving this as a general comment.

There’s no public evidence to suggest NV had a direct hand in this. AMD’s court filings are specific as regards what was stolen. They’ve recovered emails and conversations that document the fact that some employees lured others away, in violation of a non-compete clause.

AMD has made no claims against NV directly. That’s significant.

Yes, it’s still early, but consider the legal implications if NV was proven to have a hand in this. Semiconductor corporations take a *very* dim view of this kind of thing. If NV had stolen documents from AMD, AMD could sue any company that brought designs based on AMD technology to market. The fallout would be severe.

Intel and AMD cooperated when an Intel engineer tried to steal documents. There are other cases that’ve cropped up now and again. While it’s true that industrial espionage happens, and companies have undoubtedly solicited it, I’m not going to go there until AMD does — in court.

GatzLoc

Yea, but the only thing that shows their true character is immediately firing them if there’s substantial evidence that they did this with or without court.

Otherwise it’s just the criminal crying Prove It and then making a plea deal against everyone else when he gets convicted.

The realistic thing, if they fire them after/or if AMD goes to court and wins then it’s cool otherwise NVIDIA ‘The Way It’s Meant To Be Played’ takes new meaning..

Meir Elazar

The most obvious lesson here is that today there are cameras everywhere (don’t think you are alone and that your privacy is respected in the bathroom). You don’t know who is listening in and recording all of your conversations. Your every keystroke on your computer may be logged. Snowden and NSA are probably only the tip of the iceberg. Knowing this it is unbelievable that these people would actually think that they could steal corporate secrets and somehow use them for their or the company’s advantage at a competitor. I would find it even harder to believe that any reputable and responsible company would take part in this type of major risk. The gains are insignificant with respect to the potential losses if caught. Now there are 4 people who probably do not get much sleep at night and most likely have no future. And what about their families? Is it worth it? I think not. AMD may or may not have a strong case and may or may not win in court. But there is absolutely no question regarding whether these 4 individuals have lost. They lost everything they ever had and their entire future for some misguided stupidity.

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